Maybe Braun couldn’t die until he knew there was someone in Heaven who would give him the ball.

During 13 NBA seasons, the first dozen with the Knicks — all but the last scoring in double figures, averaging 14.9 points — the 6-foot-5 guard with the unorthodox behind-the-head, two-handed set shot and disjointed running one-hander looked like a 180-pound pipe cleaner.

Late in life, though, the five-time All-Star’s appearance drastically changed. In the late 1980s-early 1990s, after relocating from his childhood home of Garden City to Stuart, Fla., his legs betrayed him. He bloated big time and did not want to be seen in such shape. He faded from the couch to a wheelchair to a nursing home and finally to a rehab facility, where he died yesterday at 82, his wife, Joan, by his side.

Braun’s death leaves Hall of Famer Harry Gallatin, Vince Boryla, Ray Lumpp, Ernie Vandeweghe and George Kaftan as the survivors of the Joe Lapchick-coached Knicks that reached the Finals three straight times — 1950-51 through 1952-53.

Braun, McGuire, Boryla and Gallatin all got to coach the Knicks as well as play for them.

“Individually, we weren’t great; together, we could play with anybody,” Boryla said by phone from his home in Denver. “Dick was our motor. Harry was our horse, Carl was our scorer.

“We were like minestrone soup. We had a little bit of this and little bit of that and then we added a Sweetwater and a Connie and we became tough to beat. If I had the first pick from the batch, I’d have to say it would’ve been Carl.”

By all accounts a very promising pitcher for the Yankees’ Binghamton farm team, Braun probably could have played major league baseball, but he chose the NBA upon graduating from Colgate with Vandeweghe.

Sadly, Braun felt the Knicks, especially original owner Ned Irish, never gave him credit for what he had accomplished. That grudge carried over to succeeding regimes. He stayed clear of the Garden and refused to participate whenever alumni were honored.

Not until Donnie Walsh became Knicks president and reached out to Braun regarding the franchise’s All-Decade captains did Braun somewhat relent.

“I told him, ‘Hey, I just got here, I don’t know you from Adam or what went on before. I just think it’s important to pay tribute to those responsible for its proud history,’ ” Walsh said. “He loosened up a bit after that.”

However, Braun did not attend the ceremony, health and girth issues being what they were. Instead, Susan, the second oldest of his four daughters, represented her father and raised his hardware high.

“Carl’s first question to his daughter was, ‘How did they treat you?’ ” Walsh related. “Susan told him we treated her royally. He was very appreciative of that.”